Girls Raised in the South. The daily life of a Southern Wife, Mom and Stitcher.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Who Turned Off the Heat??

I've turned into such a baby about being cold. This morning it was 36 degrees and was freezing half to death. And of course I have a cold. I always get a cold whenever the temperature drops really fast.

And where the heck did October go?? I can blame the loss of September to Katrina, but October went by alarmingly fast too. November and December always go by fast so next thing I know it's going to be the first of next year. sigh

Yesterday my car ignition thingy broke. I was sitting outside a contractors office and couldn't turn the key to start the car. So I did the turning the wheel thing, made sure my car was in park, my emergency brake was off, etc. Still nothing. So I called my dad, my uncle, my grandfather, the car dealership, and a locksmith. None of which could help me. The locksmith did tell me to call Pop-A-Lock. So, I did that, and voila! After waiting for two hours he showed up, fixed it in about 10 minutes and only charged about a 1/3 of what the dealership estimated. So I used that two hours to alternatively nap and stitch. It was pretty nice LOL

The Kentwoood Water guy told us that you can now go down to New Orleans and drive around and see what you can see. I hope to maybe go down this weekend. I've been hearing about all the decorated refrigerators so maybe I can get some pictures. I guess people have been painting and wrapping the refrigerators that are awaiting pickup. My grandparents went down last weekend and they were saying it was probably going to take years just to pick up all the trash. Apparently the trash piles are higher than many of the buildings. There was this guy at Sam's last week that was saying he was a dump truck driver and since Katrina he's made $97,000 just hauling debris. He said he was working 18 hour days and back and forth all day every day. I didn't think to ask where they were taking all that stuff. Here's a rather morbid graphic of where the dead were found in New Orleans.

Trash pick up outside of New Orleans is still a big problem. At home ours seems like it's back on track, but in Baton Rouge it's obviously not. You still see tons of really overflowing dumpsters. At work we finally paid a passing garbage truck to come get ours.

I think most things are getting back to normal. People who can move back to New Orleans have and those who can't seem to have settled down elsewhere. Traffic is much better. There doesn't seem to be that sense of panic everywhere. The grocery store is mostly stocked now. There does seem to be some random things in short supply. Especially toiletries for some reason. Those aisles at the store always seem to be nearly empty. And kitty litter. I don't know if that's used for some kind of cleaning or something, but kitty litter is hard to find.